Demetri Martin Packs Schine Delivering Random Hilarity

By Brysan Brown

Demetri Martin performed great stand-up comedy inside Goldstein Auditorium in the Schine Student Center on Wednesday night. A former New York University Law School student, Martin has made a name for himself by appearing on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central since 2005. Alex Lievens, a freshman architecture student, praised Martin’s comedic style. “It’s unconventional in its cleverness, but it has mass appeal,” he said. After being introduced, Martin immediately engaged the audience by taking a couple of shots at the notoriously shitty Syracuse climate. “It’s not cold yet,” he said, “so I want to thank the weather for not being a dick.”

While many stand-up comedians ask rhetorical questions followed by their own personal responses, Martin incorporated answers he received from SU students into his act. When asked how classes were going, one SU student responded, “Fuck calculus.” Quick on the draw, Martin replied, “That’s got to be the nerdiest rap song ever, ‘Fuck calculus. Integrate my nuts.’ ” Nothing slipped past the ever-alert Martin: when he heard the sound of an SU ambulance, he stopped what he was saying, looked into the audience and said, “Uh-oh.” The randomness and non-linear style of his comedy is perhaps what draws him to college campuses, like SU, that are comprised of students who belong to the ADD Generation.

Martin discussed topics from drunken babies waddling around with large paper bags to walking into spider webs and thinking to himself, “Thank God I’m big, this could have been it for me.” The show every now and then became somewhat juvenile when Martin discussed the topic of farting more than necessary. “I wonder if a bird farts,” he pondered out loud at one point, “does it just speed up?”

But the multi-talented Martin made up for his strange obsession with gas by using his musical talents. He skillfully rattled of witticisms while simultaneously playing piano or a guitar-harmonica combo in true Dylanesque fashion. “It was fantastic. I liked the way he incorporated music,” said Hillary Stallings a sophomore communication and rhetorical studies student.

After the cancelation of his own show on Comedy Central, "Important Things with Demetri Martin," the comedian has traveled the country delivering his own brand of honest yet innocent humor, at one point lamenting, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone, unless you’re talking about STDs.”